


Roaming Charges

by morganya



Category: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-04-12
Updated: 2004-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/morganya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thom performs his balancing act.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roaming Charges

  
Near the end of the visit, Thom's client makes him a cup of tea, spooning loose, black leaves into a hollow silver ball and warming the teapot beforehand. The teacup looks like a robin's eggshell in Thom's hands, same color and weight. He holds it in both hands, imagining himself closing his fingers too roughly, shattering the china.

"I got it as a wedding gift," Thom's client, whose name is Emily, tells him. "When I was a little girl, I always wanted a tea set like this, with little saucers and cups. It always looked so perfect. Then, of course, you use it and it gets chipped..."

"Or you eat your soup out of it or something," Thom says. "Yeah."

She smiles and looks into her living room, where they've just come from, at the green velvet sofa and tiny star-like lights that he's just finished assuring her look beautiful. "It's always like that, right? As soon as something's in your life, it stops being special."

"Well, it depends," Thom says. "I mean, just because you use it every day doesn't make it ordinary, right?"

She tilts her head at him.

"It doesn't have to be locked up or, like, have little ropes around it to be meaningful. I think it's how you use something that makes it special."

She looks at him silently, and he feels her wanting to believe him, wanting to say yes. She's not quite there yet. "It was a lovely gift. For a lovely wedding." She starts to pick up her teacup. "Do you have a..."

Thom watches her search for the right word. Boyfriend? Partner? Lover? Friend? He moves his hand, watches the dark, steaming tea swirl gently against the sides of the cup.

"No," he says. "Not really."

*****

They're all five of them in the back of the car, and Thom can't be sure whose leg belongs to who, or even who's sitting next to him at this point in time. Someone's hand is around his shoulders and Thom's mouth is full of the taste of gin, bitter juniper berries fermenting on his tongue, and someone once told him that juniper was poison, drinking gin was something akin to swigging bathtub hooch, but he always doubted the wisdom of that statement -

Lights of the city hit his eyes like stars in supernova. Kyan hums some mindless, wordless tune and Jai is saying, _What the fuck, Carson, what the fuck,_ and Ted is saying, _Didn't we get this all out of our systems in_ college, Carson saying, _Just like rolling off a log and falling onto a man, you never forget how to do it -_

When the car comes to a stop Thom rises (dignity, always dignity), sprawling over arms and legs and laps, losing his balance, right into Carson, shocking pink silk shirt rumpling under his fingers, and Carson stares calmly at him and whispers, "We'll have none of that until I see a ring on my finger."

*****

Thom carries these things with him when he travels: a shoulder bag stuffed full of cigarettes, magazines, Altoids, CDs, cell phone and Treo 600, special good luck bracelet tethered around his left wrist, sample book held on his lap like a baby. The book holds every sketch he's made, every color chart, the pages slick to the touch with swatches of silk and cotton and taffeta. It bumps comfortingly against his stomach whenever he shifts position or moves his legs.

He falls asleep as the plane starts to taxi down the runway. It's the kind of sleep that he's become familiar with over the past year, where he switches from aware to unconscious all at once.

He dreams he's on a glass mountain, the ground as gray and smooth as a mirror. He watches himself try to climb, upside-down reflection connected to his heels. It would be easier if he had an axe or something, just to create a path.

He gets down on his hands and knees and pulls himself forward with his elbows, but all that happens is he starts sliding backwards, faster and faster, the glass jagged and molten against his face.

He wakes up not knowing where he is.

*****

This client's name is Eric, and he stares at the sketches of the proposed hotel rooms and at the fabric swatches that Thom has brought him as if expecting them to speak. "I don't want it to feel like a Motel 6..."

"It won't," Thom says. When he was a kid and just starting out, clients questioning his choices would cut him to the quick, and he had to fight back the urge to show them his NCIDQ scores to prove he did in fact know what he was talking about. Now he knows it's just part of the process, the clients making sure they can trust him. It's not personal.

"See, what I think'd be really great here, with the lobby," Thom says, pointing to the sketch, "is if we kind of bring in the outside a little bit, because you've got this great beachfront property. See how much more open it looks compared to what you have now?"

"I don't want it to be _barren_..."

"We're just going to open up the space a little bit. You've got, like, billions of people coming in and out every day, and with what you've got now, they've got to squinch around all of the chairs and pillars and tables. I mean, I kind of know where you're going with it, but it's just too much at once, you know?"

"Yeah," Eric says. He pokes one of the swatches experimentally. "We still should keep the lounge area and have the front desk be visible when the patrons walk in..."

"Of course, absolutely. We're just going smaller, and lighter, and kind of editing it a little. That's what you wanted, right?"

Eric nods.

About seventy five to ninety percent of Thom's job revolves around making the clients think that everything was their idea in the first place.

*****

"Tell me which one you like better," Carson says. "Going through straight guy squalor or dealing with rich people all day."

Thom is perched on the arm of Carson's chair, looking down at the top of his head, chestnut strands half-hidden by the blond ones. If he keeps going on like this, he'll turn into a reverse skunk. He needs a trim.

"You first," Thom says. "Whose private area would you rather root around in?"

Carson doesn't look up. "Honey, you think I care whose cock I touch?"

*****

Carson always needs to have the last word. That's the one thing about him that makes sense. The rest of him just seems like a collection of traits pieced together like Frankenstein.

Carson wears a three-piece suit one day and hip-huggers and fake-fur jackets the next, and treats them with the same amount of care. Carson pretends he doesn't know long division. He keeps horse whips displayed like Gauguins on the walls of his house. Carson hides books by Proust and Thomas Wolfe in his bedside table and puts Jackie Collins and Robert James Waller in his bookshelves. Carson's hair is one dye-job away from untouchable. Carson worries. Carson is oblivious.

Carson isn't oblivious enough.

*****

It starts in the middle of the store, Thom picking out lamps for Jacob the client's spare room, and all he hears after a while is his own voice saying, "This is great, right? Do you like it?" and he's not sure if the client actually does like it or not, he's just got that glazed look on his face but Thom can't stop himself from asking.

They finally settle on a heavy, golden table lamp, which Thom will show to Jacob's wife before ordering more.

"She's running the show, anyway," Jacob says. He holds the lamp carefully, weighing it, fingertips brushing against the shade, and he starts talking, about the house, the renovations, the money that he's shelling out to Thom, not that he minds of course, it's not the money, it's about making her happy, it's the least he can do.

For the next twenty minutes Jacob talks without stopping, every dirty little secret out in the open, every facet of the marriage dissected in front of Thom, and Thom can only stand in the middle of the store and listen as Jacob emotionally hemorrhages all over him, and he keeps rubbing Jacob's neck and thinking, _Um, I just wanted to pick out a table lamp._

*****

The music is on at top volume, something with a beat that goes _eh uh eh uh eh uh_, repeated ad infinitum. They're inches away from each other, Thom's arm draped around Carson's shoulders, brittle bones pressing into his forearm. Thom looks above the tidal wave of people on the dance floor, up at the friezes on the wall, golden vines and cherubs curly-cuing just below the upper molding, and thinks that the whole building seems to be having an identity crisis.

Carson leans back and says something, but the music is too loud and it swallows up anything below a scream, and all Thom hears is implied words, Carson's breath warm against the side of his neck.

"Oh my God. I know," Thom says, and thinks that it might be better to do this from now on, to just respond without listening, to keep Carson from knocking him off balance. Might save a lot of time.

Carson pulls away and leaves Thom's arm still resting on the banquette. Thom takes a drink, looking at Carson's hands on the table, not tapping out a beat or fumbling with a button or doing anything in particular and it doesn't feel right that he should be so still.

"I'll be right back," Thom shouts, and he can't tell if anyone hears him or not. He struggles through the crowd, the floor lost under a thousand people's feet.

In the bathroom, he runs cold water over the backs of his hands. The soap smells like powder and alcohol, and it sticks to his skin when he tries to rub it in.

He hears the door swing closed. Carson leans against the wall, a little drunk, a little flushed, watching him without speaking.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Thom says. "God knows what's been on that wall."

"A little staph infection never hurt anybody," Carson says. "So..."

Thom starts to say, "Carson, you're going to walk in on something you shouldn't see one of these days," but he gets as far as "Carson, y_umph..._" before Carson has him up against the wall, his back pressing into the nozzle of the hand dryer, metal jutting alarmingly close to his spine.

Carson has fingers like spider legs. They tickle against his stomach and Thom laughs into Carson's mouth, the sound muted and ineffectual. Carson presses his palm flat against Thom's heart.

Thom doesn't know what he's supposed to do with his own hands. He grabs for Carson's shoulders, his hands still wet, trying to pull him closer, and then Carson abruptly comes up for air. He takes a step back and checks himself in the mirror, his shirt marked with Thom's wet hand prints.

Carson looks over his shoulder and gives Thom a dazzling, movie star smile. "Sorry. Just had to do that." He walks out of the bathroom whistling.

Thom looks at himself in the mirror, his hair mussed, his stomach poking out through his rumpled shirt, his mouth still hanging open.

*****

The clients are grateful for everything he does for them. Most of the time he's proud and grateful for their gratitude, but sometimes he can't feel anything but drained and punch-drunk.

He's not part of their lives, he's just rearranging them, but for however long the job takes, he's there, sorting through everyone else's memories and desires and hope, and then at the end he goes away.

He knows the clients better than their parents do, better than their lovers, better than themselves. They don't know him half as well as he knows them. They have no reason to remember him other than as a guy doing his job.

Sometimes the one-sided intimacy feels as though it might choke him.

*****

Thom gets home, drops his suitcase on the floor, and finds a note from Kelly the dog walker on the table, in her cartoonish, bubbly writing - _P. fed and walked. See you tomorrow!_ The dog runs out from the kitchen, barking, and plops down at Thom's feet, quivering with joy.

Thom sits down, rubs Paco's tummy, babbles to him softly as he reminds himself just what is and isn't real. The back of his neck is throbbing.

He gets up and goes to the living room, where he lies on the sofa and thinks about watching TV. Somehow that feels like more of an imposition than entertainment. The dog comes in and hops up beside him, tail bopping against Thom's leg.

"Ungh. Bad dog. Get off," Thom says unconvincingly; Paco just licks his wrist and settles down to sleep. Thom reaches for the phone.

He dials Carson's cell phone without really thinking about it, and by the time he realizes what he's doing the phone is ringing and it's too late to hang up. Carson answers, a symphony of bass and laughter behind his voice.

"Hello?"

"Hi," Thom says. "It's me."

"Thom? Are you drunk-dialing again?"

"No," Thom says. "No, I -"

He looks around his apartment, at the city outside his windows, at the flickering lights of a million and one other apartments. Paco sighs beside him.

"I think," Thom says, "I think I just wanted to hear you talk."

For a moment all he hears is Carson considering, and the bass line is louder than ever. Then Carson says, "Oh, okay," and begins talking, Thom hearing him move from wherever it is he's at into somewhere quieter, with the whooshing sound of cars passing by and the occasional honk. Carson's voice blends in with it all.

Near his ear, he hears Carson's voice humming softly, the slow inhale on his cigarette, the occasional word "...nobody ever tells the right kind of fairy tales, do they?", until it might as well be all together, Carson's voice inside his head, the phone not even necessary.

"Thom?" Carson says. "Honey, you asleep?"

He starts to answer, but whatever he wanted to say gets lost, and he just lies there, one hand on his dog's head, and he just listens to Carson breathing along with him.


End file.
